Barths images of interiors, buildings, suburban roads or natural environments are often out of focus, perversely cropped and apparently empty of any foreground subject. Yet what emerges from this reduction and abstraction of subject matter is a body of photographs of extraordinary, haunting beauty, evocative of great moments in the history of painting, from Vermeer to Whistler, or of a cinematic ambience such as the fume-laden neon haze of Martin Scorseses Taxi Driver.

Born in Berlin on January 29, 1958, Uta Barth moved to the United States as a teenager. She received a B.A. from the University of California in Davis in 1982 and an M.F.A. from the University of California in Los Angeles in 1985…